Shorebank Opens Apartments in Blighted Section of Chicago

Shorebank Corp. is bringing its community development image to one of the most crime-ridden areas of its home city.

The company's real estate division last week opened a housing development in a blighted neighborhood once known as the home of the "murder building."

Two years after that infamous building was torn down, Shorebank subsidiary City Lands Corp. has opened on the same block a 62-unit apartment complex intended to attract working and middle-class families to the West Side neighborhood of Austin.

The new unit is intended to serve as an anchor to stabilize the area and ease further development, said Susan McCann, president of City Lands.

Until it was demolished in 1994, the "murder building" was a hub of criminal activity that made the entire block of North Park Avenue a dangerous place.

The rehab cost $5.9 million and was financed by LaSalle National Bank, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago.

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